Meeting Today Launches First Scientific Look at the Children of September 11
An online meeting today (Wednesday, June 21) will mark the beginning of the next chapter in the fight to secure healthcare for survivors of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. To date, all such efforts have been focused on the adults who responded to the site, along with those who lived or worked in Lower Manhattan on that day or in the months that followed.
Last December, however, Congress amended the law governing the World Trade Center Health Program. The primary purpose of that new legislation was to provide continued funding for the Health Program. But the new language also contained a mandate, for the first time, “to establish a new research cohort to conduct future research studies on the health and educational impacts… on the population of individuals who were 21 years of age or younger at the time of exposure.”
The youngest children in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, newborn infants 22 years ago are now graduating college. Children who were in elementary or high school are today in their 30s and 40s. Virtually no data exists about how their health has been affected by their exposure to more than 2,500 contaminants (including asbestos, lead, mercury, dioxins, crystalline silica, cadmium, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, along with pulverized concrete and glass) now known to have filled the air and coated every surface for hundreds of yards in all directions. There is not even a centralized list of names and contact information for such young people.
But there are troubling clues. At a Community Board 1 (CB1) discussion last December, when Congress was debating the legislation that renewed Health Program funding, Wendy Chapman weighed in with a viscerally personal insight: “I was pregnant and also had a baby who was less than a year old when September 11 happened. My oldest daughter had a cancer removed last January. And I think back on the time when we were playing in Washington Market Park, which had been cleaned up after September 11, and all the sand had been removed when the park was cleaned. And then all of our babies were out there playing a few months later when emergency personnel in haz-mat suits showed up and told us our children couldn’t play in the park, because they had to remove all the sand again. I’m concerned that we’ll have additional cancers in the future.”
Today’s meeting will be hosted by the Scientific/Technical Advisory Committee of the Health Program. The agenda will include a presentation on establishing the new youth cohort and an overview of young survivors. In addition, the WTC Survivors Steering Committee will lead presentations on young survivors’ views and community-based participatory research.
Mariama James, a CB1 member who has led the charge for accountability, transparency, and support for survivors for almost two decades, said, “this cohort of young people, many of whom aren’t even in the World Trade Center Registry, let alone the Health Program, are now in their own child-bearing years. It is so important that they are tracked for emerging conditions—that their physical, mental and emotional health needs are met and treated in ways that work for them. And that often doesn’t look as it would for responders or older survivors. It’s critical that these efforts start now, while some of us older folks are still around to help them to be certified or otherwise navigate the system. These are 20- and 30-year-old ‘kids’ who tend not to remember, or have ever known, a lot of the details sought from them. Being asked is just another trigger and stressor that they don’t need. Developing this cohort will create an opportunity for data collection to help them and their peers for many years to come.”
Kimberly Flynn, the director of 9/11 Environmental Action, a non-profit advocacy group whose mission is to ensure that those who were affected physically or emotionally by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, get the health care they need, said, “the effort to track the health of people exposed as children is critical and long-overdue. Without it, the Health Program will be completely in the dark about the health impacts of September 11 toxins on Lower Manhattan residents and students who were children at the time, and who are most vulnerable to harm and whose health has not been tracked to scientific standards.”